This thing called Achalasia.

The Internet is indeed a wonderful and strange place where many odd things can be found and people connect with each other through shared interests all over the world. Indeed, when I was looking for scoliosis support I found 3 forums and more sites than I could possibly imagine. Some of the people I met online I felt so close to since they were going through the same as me and our shared experiences in turn helped us and others to get through a difficult time. This all brings me to now...

...now, I have been diagnosed with something else horrible. It has no cure and any treatment serves only to alleviate the symptoms. It affects me every day, every time I eat and most times when I drink but it’s not like suddenly discovering I have coeliac disease or diabetes where I have to change my diet. It doesn’t really matter what I try to eat –in theory I can tolerate any food I want – if only I could get it inside me!

So, I did a little digging on the internet and came up with some very good informative sites (like here, here and here,) but really very little in the way of support. Now I know that this is something that only affects 1 in 100,000 people, but there are a lot of people on the planet – so I was a bit surprised. Now, before all you achalasia support people out there get annoyed at me, I know that you are all posting on places like the Gastroenterology forums but then you have to sift through all sorts of other conditions (some of them quite ‘eew’ as well), before finding anyone else who is just the same as you.

So, without the support of hundreds of random people, I have had to make up my own mind and after all the testing (endoscopy, barium swallow and manometry – which shows I am a textbook case!) I have decided to go back under the knife. I just want to be able to eat and I hope that they can get me reasonably well fixed as soon as possible. All I have to do now is wait for a date to go in – it’s all rather a shame really – I had thought I’d left all my surgery behind me....

So, as you may be able to tell from my tone, I am finding this all rather depressing and I am just in a bit of a funk generally. Poor old hubby is bearing all this with great stoicism as usual and Clumsy is trying to help by dribbling in my ear when I am in bed. What do you think....should I go out and spend lots of money???